I had a two-hour sit-down with an improbable pair of actors this afternoon. Yesterday, a Sunday, I got a call at home from somebody who said, "Hi. It's Val Kilmer." Despite my immediate temptation to be skeptical, it turns out it really was Val Kilmer. He wanted to pick my brain about possible Dallas spaces in which he could perform his developing one-man show on Mark Twain. It's always a pleasant surprise to get a phone call from a movie star, especially a polite and intelligent one.

Shortly afterwards, I got a call from Dallas performance artist Fred Curchack -- who had been the one who had given Kilmer my name in the first place. (Kilmer is friends with one of Fred's graduate students.) Curchack had agreed to drive Kilmer around today, and a vague plan developed about meeting up sometime.

Of course, when I talked to them, both men were in California. Kilmer moved to Los Angeles last year after living in New Mexico for decades. As I knew from a phone interview a couple of days before, Curchack was in San Francisco seeing a play his partner, Laura Jorgensen, had directed. Fred was on the way to the airport as we were speaking. Kilmer made the impromptu decision to fly to Dallas as we were speaking. Ah, the glories of modern transportation.

So I sat down with both these fellows (plus Kilmer's producer, Peggye Marks) for a nice conversation today. Kilmer talked a lot about Twain (apparently he had a thing for Christian Science founder Mary Baker Eddy, which I did not know). He also talked about his time studying at Juilliard and playing Jim Morrison in The Doors (which came up when we were discussing how younger folks don't share memories of things we take for granted -- like the deaths of President Kennedy...or Jim Morrison). Fred as always had a lot of good stories, too. I just talked about our many beautiful theatrical spaces.

We can hope we'll get a chance to see the Twain show, perhaps in advance of the official premiere at California's Pasadena Playhouse next spring.